o render progress through
it extremely difficult. Not only are there obstructions in the way of
tree trunks, underbrush, and trailing vines and creepers like ropes,
but the footing is nothing more than a mat of interlaced roots. The
forest is also sombre and gloomy. To take a photograph required an
exposure of from three to five minutes. Not a stone, not even a pebble,
is anywhere to be found.

Disease is rampant, especially on the smaller branches of the
rivers. The incurable _beri-beri_ and a large assortment of fevers
claim first place as death dealers, smiting the traveller with fearful
facility. Next come a myriad of insects and reptiles--alligators,
huge bird-eating spiders, and snakes of many varieties. Snakes,
both the poisonous and non-poisonous kinds, find here conditions
precisely to their liking. The bush-master is met with in the more
open places, and there are many that are venomous, but the most
terrifying, though not a biting reptile is the water-boa, the sucuruju
(_Eunectes murinus_) or anaconda. It lives to a great age and reaches
a size almost beyond belief. Feeding, as generally it does at night,
it escapes common observation, and white men, heretofore, have not
seen the largest specimens reported, though more than thirty feet is
an accepted length, and Bates, the English naturalist, mentions one
he heard of, forty-two feet long. It is not surprising that Mr. Lange
should have met with one in the far wilderness he visited, of even
greater proportions, a hideous monster, ranking in its huge bulk with
the giant beasts of antediluvian times. The sucuruju is said to be
able to swallow whole animals as large as a goat or a donkey, or even
larger, and the naturalist referred to tells of a ten-year-old boy,
son of his neighbour, who, left to mind a canoe while his father went
into the forest, was, in broad day, playing in the shade of the trees,
stealthily enwrapped by one of the monsters. His cries brought his
father to the rescue just in time.

As the Javary heads near the eastern slopes and spurs of the great
Peruvian Cordillera, where once lived the powerful and wealthy Inca
race with their great stores of pure gold obtained from prolific mines
known to them, it is again not surprising that Mr. Lange should have
stumbled upon a marvellously rich deposit of the precious metal in
a singular form. The geology of the region is unknown and the origin
of the gold Mr. Lange found cannot at present even be su